Offsetting your Carbon Footprint through Renewable Energy Credits

2007 has been a watershed year for Guidance in terms of our environmental policy and the actions we’ve taken to reduce our impact on the environment. Guidance’s use of Renewable Energy Credits to offset the carbon emissions associated with our business activities led this Green Team member to wonder how I could become personally carbon neutral.

The website http://www.begreennow.com/, a unit of Green Mountain Energy, provides a great tool called the Carbon Calculator that makes it easy to calculate your own personal carbon footprint in five easy steps.

I was surprised to discover it will cost me less than well under $100 per year to purchase enough Renewable Energy Credits to become carbon neutral.

Want to calculate your personal carbon footprint and take steps to become carbon neutral?

Click on this link – http://www.begreennow.com/redoffset/begreenreduceofset_cal – then follow the five steps below.

1) You'll be prompted to enter your electricity usage. You can determine the number of kilowatt hours of electricity you use by looking at your electric bill. Enter your monthly usage and the Carbon Calculator will multiply that figure to arrive at your yearly usage.

2) The Carbon Calculator will ask you to enter information about the number of cars you drive, the makes and models, and number of miles you log each year. Your work commute has already been included in Guidance’s carbon emissions calculation, so you only need to calculate the miles you drive in your personal time.

3) You’ll be prompted to enter some information about your personal air travel for the year. Guidance has already included your business travel in calculating our company carbon footprint, so you’ll only need to enter your personal air travel here.

4) You’ll be asked to enter some information pertaining to the amount of natural gas you use. Here again, you can get this information from your monthly Gas Company bill.

5) Once you’ve entered all the information, click the button labeled “Offset my emissions”. The Carbon Calculator will calculate your total emissions and tell you how many Renewable Energy Credits you will need to purchase to become carbon neutral.